7:00 pm Well, at least the show is off to an okay start with Bruce.
Everyone gets strings behind them when they’re old, even the Boss.

7:04 pm Oh, there’s Gaga.
I’d get drunk if I drank everytime LL licked his lips. It must be because of “the Heavenly Father.” They’re so lucky that he was set to be host already. “You know, life consists of joys and sorrows,” LL tells us
Christopher is probably happy, they’re playing Whitney’s 1991 Grammy performance.
“Sir O.G. Paul McCartney.” #thingsthatLLsaid #grammys

7:16 pm NO NO NO FOO.
HIMYM proves that even Kal Penn is looking for love.

7:20 pm BONNIE RAITT. Thank you for remembering Etta. Alicia: Uh huhh. Let’s do it. She also makes an “At Last” joke. I get it Alicia. I see what you just did there. Bonnie Raitt’s like, when can I get the fuck out of there.
Adele thanks her doctors. Alicia Keyes is like, hey remember when I won 5 Grammys? Like that’s not happening again.
Aaron: Chris Brown is like if Usher was evil.
Alberto: So I’m getting the same thing as at the Super Bowl, where the set is more interesting than the performance.
No audience shots. Interesting.

7:35 pm Grammy winners Fergie and Mark Anthony. Terrible.
Guys, electronica has had a really good influence on rap and making it tangible for the masses.
Alberto: Reba is starting to look like Dana Carvey’s Ross Perot.
Aaron: Kelly Clarkson’s tattoo (a puzzle piece) is Justin Guarini.

7:46 pm So Foo performed. In another venue so everyone at the Grammys could go to the bathroom and we wouldn’t be “bored.”
(Unrelated) Jessie: Thanks for bringing your dip y’all.
Mastercard: The courage to be old and sexy.

7:56 pm Kate: What corner of the room is Rihanna in? Aaron: A hopeless corner.
Kate: I would go to a concert that was just this song for an hour and a half. Jessie: You mean you getting ready every Friday night?
Alberto: She better watch it, she’s getting an MC Hammer number of dancers.

More Coldplay. I wish Gwyneth was here and not like at home with a $1000 face mask on.
Coldplay and Rihanna have Tangled behind them.
All I’ve learned is that Chris Martin did a bad job shaving this morning.

8:16 pm So Ryan Seacrest owns the Grammys, and is owning this with his presence.
Look how square Foster the People are. Jessie: The bassist is having a good time. He’s like, look at this pleat in my pants.

#ladygagadancingtothebeachboys

8:31 pm It’s like LL is ready to be on the runway.
Sir Paul McCartney has become Burt Bacharach. And they didn’t cut to Diana Krall once. He’s proof that a standing O is just peer pressure.

8:36 pm Chris Brown: I’ve got to thank the Grammys for letting me get on this stage. Let me now rush off as quickly as possible.

8:40 pm Taylor is not playing the banjo right now. She’s instead sitting against the set of Le Mis and Urinetown.
Jessie: She’s such a next-door hottie.
This is so that scene in Freaky Friday where the mom plays for the daughter off-stage because the mom who everyone thinks is the daughter has to fake-play guitar.
Bonnie Raitt is not having Taylor’s “They like me! They really like me!” routine.

8:54 pm Oh has Katy Perry decided to promote a new album, 2 years later?
I don’t know who was like, yeah, show off your love handles Katy Perry, that’s sexy. But oh HELLO guitarist.
“Now look at me I’m sparkling….You will never put me out again/I’m glowing.” This new single is a clear dig to Russell Brand, gossip columns will cry out Monday morning.
Like, that was controversial to me, that performance.

8:57 pm I think Miranda and Blake are getting divorced. I can only pray as much, then their marriage won’t be forced down my throats.
Lady Antebellum is just the worst. It’s upsetting how much more upset I get about the decline of country music in America than any other kind.

9:05 pm Wow Gwyneth and Chris Martin are in the same room. Who knew.

Adele = flawless. Just stop smoking, I worry. AND she looks like she’s having fun.

9:16 pmSurvivor commercial: Swimsuit photographer?

When did country become ok with men with skinny jeans, mullets and v-necks?
Jessie: Hey, there’s someone actually playing the banjo.

9:23 pm Paul McCartney and his ilk are literally the only ones old enough to cut to during this Glen Campbell performance.
Jessie: Look at these women sitting down and texting.

9:23 pm Carrie Underwood is such a pageant queen. I also find Tony Bennett one of the most overrated performers in American history. This is too Vegas and not enough Jazz.
It’s like some of these people got scalped tickets to sit under the benches and look up people’s skirts.

9:34 pm Bon Iver: It’s hard for me to accept this award because I’m balding and should shave my head. But a legit speech.

Christopher: Music. You might have heard of it #grammyfoundation

9:39 pm In memoriam, finally.
I just wonder if Whitney had died earlier this year how that would have changed this ceremony. Who is to say that Amy Winehouse or Etta is more or less influential than her?

9:50 pm Every time I see David Guetta I just think about how white he is.

The Grammys are acting like there’s a lack of options when it comes to performers.

9:57 pm I just don’t understand why we have to watch all these special features. They’re usually on a separate DVD.

Album of the Year. Adele. Duh.
Jessie: Welcome. Welcome to America.
She looks like a crazy housewife, but it’s cool. “Mom, Gold is good!” And: “This record is inspired by something that everyone has been through, which is a rubbish relationship.”

I’m signing off now because I cannot handle another Paul McCartney performance, and neither can my peers. PEACE.

Also Clarence Clemons died. “Even after Mr. Springsteen chose to write shorter, pop-structured songs, making concision his new discipline, Mr. Clemons held his place: as the honking foundation of ‘Hungry Heart’ and the longed-for dance partner in ‘Dancing in the Dark,'” writes Jon Pareles. People have paid respects in awesome ways, but “Hungry Heart” is maybe my favorite Springsteen song, so here you go:

Read this story about the leftovers of the Riot Grrrl movement. “We’d have these challenges: Do you think we could write about the intersection between coming out as LGBT or coming out as a sexual-abuse survivor?Can we write a catchy song about that?” said Kathleen Hanna.

What does it mean that an artist has “made” a painting? What was seen as revolutionary in Andy Warhol’s factory is basically the present-day way an artist’s studio functions.

Debbie Reynolds is giving up her dream of creating a museum out of her amazing collection of Old Hollywood memorabilia by auctioning it all. Luckily, now you have lots of options for what to get me for my birthday.

Jeff Conaway aka Kenickie from Grease aka the man who made a lot of inappropriate jokes I didn’t get until I was very old has died.

This piece by Roseanne Barr about working in show business (especially on Roseanne) is relatively fascinating and amazing.

David Pogue threw an iPhone at his wife. While domestic violence is not funny, the fact that it was an iPhone is. It’s like he doesn’t work in journalism and doesn’t understand what a good headline is made of.

Feel like NOVA hasn’t been delivering its usual high-quality pieces? You might get upset about the following:
“Scrambling to secure much-needed funding, the Public Broadcasting Service began its spring pledge drive Monday with the debut broadcast of Nova: Boobs A-Bouncin’. “We at PBS are proud to present this latest installment in our award-winning science series,” PBS spokesperson David Brennan said of the two-hour special devoted to the science of breast mobility. “As you’ll see, Boobs A-Bouncin’ covers all the ups-and-downs, side-to-sides, and other various jiggling patterns associated with the physics of breasts in motion. Please enjoy this episode, and please, please call the number at the bottom of your screen to donate.”

“In desperation Janis dumps her bag onto the floor of the limo. Its contents are truly awesome. Janis has a baglady’s compulsion to carry her whole life with her. There are: two movie stubs, a pack of cigarettes, an antique cigarette holder, several motel and hotel room keys, a box of Kleenex, a compact and various make up cases (in addition to a bunch of eyebrow pencils held together with a rubber band), an address book, dozens of bits of paper, business cards, match box covers with phone numbers written in near-legible barroom scrawls, guitar picks, a bottle of Southern Comfort (empty), a hip flask, an opened package of complementary macadamia nuts from American Airlines, cassettes of Johnny Cash and Otis Redding, gum, sunglasses, credit cards, aspirin, assorted pens and writing pad, a corkscrew, an alarm clock, a copy of Time, and two hefty books-Nancy Milford’s biography of Zelda Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel.”

– And music really does dope you up, so keep listening.
– Listen to these Lucinda Williams covers. A few surprises here, like Ben Folds, but Laura Cantrell and Emmylou Harris are old favorites.

People
1. Hindsight is 20/20. It is also the name of an ABC show that airs on Friday nights.

Gumbel: “And then it sounded stupid when I said it, violence ‘at’ NBC….What is internet anyway?”
Couric: “Internet is that massive computer network, the one that’s becoming really big now.”

2. Jack Nicholson has an open, honest discussion with The Daily Mail, who found him unsurprisingly “charming, fascinating, funny, strangely vulnerable and completely original in every way.” Nicholson explains his feelings about plastic surgery by noting that he was a part of history; he “was on the receiving end of one of the very first chest augmentations. When I touched what felt like polythene, that was it. The fuse went out. Maybe it’s childish, but I couldn’t cope with it.” He believes that if “someone can fool” him with it, he’s “happy to be fooled.” But ultimately, he’s “not worried about wrinkles” in anyone: “I can’t see so well, so sometimes I look in the mirror and I see how I was as a young man. But a few years back I noticed I don’t have any hair below my sock line, and I thought to myself, ‘Jackie, that’s an old man.'”

Nicholson also claims that “If men are honest, everything they do and everywhere they go is for a chance to see women. There were points in my life where I felt oddly irresistible to women. I’m not in that state now and that makes me sad.”

3. Okay, maybe Human Planet will be really cool.

4. A new solution to depression may be surgery. “DBS consists of inserting thin wires in the brain that are connected to a matchbox sized ‘pacemaker’ inserted under the skin that provides constant electric stimulation. The effects are to inhibit and stimulate brain circuits that are either too active or underactive. These brain circuits are known to be involved with the regulation and control of emotion.” Perhaps developments like this will convince all those people out there who are all like, you’re just sad, take a walk.

Tennis Gets It’s Own Category
The Australian Open, the only Grand Slam I never really watch because the time difference is just too annoying, is over, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy some funny tennis faces, Nadal in his underwear, or Kim Clijsters being a badass, subtly.

The Political Machine
1. The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are back on Hulu!

3) Warren Buffett Continues To Be A Badass
On Sunday, ABC will air “This Week With Christiane Amanpour,” with featured billionaire Warren Buffett. Some choice quotes:
“If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe even the upper middle class should even probably be cut further. But I think that people at the high end — people like myself — should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we’ve ever had it.”
AND
“The rich are always going to say that, you know, just give us more money and we’ll go out and spend more and then it will all trickle down to the rest of you. But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on.”
Dude is 80. That is all.

My dad was the first person I knew personally who had a blog, way back when on March 11, 2004. Though he had a bit of a love/hate relationship with the internet, I often find that he was able to drag up some of the best stuff I read and watched about politics, art and music, to name a few. So weekly or so, expect to see a new column entitled “Curmudgeon Says”, where I’ll feature pieces that I’m pretty sure he would have been down with.

1) Flamingoes are the best
Image by Danny Dries “Last of the Firebirds”
Best collection of Pink Flamingoes I’ve ever seen. (I now wonder if calling them “Pink” Flamingoes is redundant. But if you don’t know why they’re pink, you should because it is the funnest fact.)

2) The Boss: I Wish I Had A Moniker As Cool
Famous people have driver’s licenses too! Well “too” in the general sense, as I’m not actually part of that club…